Imagine

Please read the following guidelines before submitting a review for any of John Lennon's albums. Reviews that ignore the guidelines are likely to be deleted.

Do not post very short reviews such as "This is an excellent album -- my favorite!". That says nothing about the album other than your opinion it's excellent. Your opinions of what makes an album excellent may be what makes an album mediocre for others, so it's important that you tell us why you think it's excellent. If your review is too lean, it will probably be deleted. Please feel free to write a new one afterwards.

You should assume that your primary audience are people who have never heard the album and your review should give them a good sense of what it is about. Ideally, you would comment on all the songs, but it is also important to focus on the album as a whole. One common strategy is to suggest that an album has a common theme or message and then use the individual songs as examples.

Reviews that are unecessarily rude, vulgar, or otherwise offensive will be deleted. Please keep it clean.

Example of a Good Review

Here is an example of the quality of reviews which should be submitted. While reading it, pay particular attention to how the reviewer backs up his opinions with real examples from the songs.

Aug 4, 1995Jeff Blehar (Bleharj@Erols.com)
Arguably Lennon's most famous album, Imagine does not do much for me. Although the title song is definitely his most famous, and most loved, it leaves me feeling somewhat flat. The instrumentation is too sugary for my taste (What would you expect from Phil Spector?) and the tune, while quite easy on ears, is much too repetitive. "Crippled Inside" is, as one reviewer put it, a "quintessentially stupid song," and there is much too much echo on the song. "Jealous Guy", a rewrite of Lennon's 1968 song "Child Of Nature", suffers from the same problems as "Imagine"; candyfloss orchestration, and a repetitive tune (my KINGDOM for a middle eight!!). "It's So Hard" is a standard blues song, and actually it rocks nicely, but again, it's very derivative. "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier" is a sonic experiment; brave, defiant, and the like. It's a stormy affair, with reverb-drenched guitars and voices, but it is the closest John ever got to the avant-garde 'sound' other than "Revolution 9" and the "Nutopian International Anthem". All of that being said, there are some very good tunes on the album. "Oh My Love" is quiet, contemplative, beautiful and lyrically very revealing. ("Oh my love for the first time in my life, my mind is wide open") "Give Me Some Truth" is another classic Lennon raver, this time with some real conviction backing it. "How Do You Sleep?" is Lennon's best hate song, and Spector is to be congratulated for giving this song the edge it needed. Finally, "Oh Yoko!" is my favorite song on the album. I imagine that if you had to ascribe a sound to the feeling of serendipity, this song would be it. Guitar, drums, piano and John's impassioned vocal come together in the best possible way imaginable to create a wash of happy sound. (Credit ought to be given to the mixing engineers here). Overall an average album with a few high points, and a let-down after Plastic Ono Band.

Example of a Bad Review

Here is a review that really doesn't say anything. Remember, your opinion of an album means nothing unless you can back it up with examples.

May 24, 1996anonymous
personally i found this album the most uniqiue in his collection thus other albums of his have the quality of the true song writer he was. the beatles were obviously sincere in song writing,but when john lennon wrote and composed a song, it was magic.

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